Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Enjoy all of your favorite shows… right after you finish reading this topic.
Watch Movies in the Backseat of Your
Car
HACK 55
If you're a parent, you know that long trips in a car with children can be…
trying. Why not build a relatively inexpensive, in-car media player?
The idea of a TV screen in the car is not at all new. In fact, you can right now drop a
few thousand dollars and have one installed that plays DVDs from your dashboard.
Or, you can spend significantly less and build something yourself that plays practically
anything you can think of.
Our good friend, the Raspberry Pi, is small, efficient, and it plays movies very, very
well, thanks to its dedicated hardware support for video codecs. Here's what you need
to hack it together for those long car trips that need a little entertainment.
Your Reliant (in Terms of Power) Automobile
Really, any make or model of car should work for this, with one caveat: power. A bit of
a history lesson is probably appropriate here.
Once upon a time, it was cool to smoke cigarettes, and car manufacturers felt like they
were doing their customers a major service by providing an on-demand heat source
that they could use to light their smokes. This device works by connecting a thin coil
of nichrome wire to a high current from the car's electrical system. You'd push the
handle in, the current would heat up the coil, and in a few seconds, the lighter would
heat up (it would actually glow orange/red hot) and then the handle would pop out.
You could then press the tip to your cigarette and enjoy the act of giving yourself lung
cancer on the go.
Today, most people choose not to use those cancer sticks, but these “cigarette lighter”
receptacles remain. Why? Because these ports provide 12 volts of electricity, and we
have a lot of power-hungry gadgets that need juice. While some new vehicles provide
dedicated USB (or even pronged power outlets), most of them still provide these
standard, 12 V “cigarette lighter” plugs. In fact, a lot of cars that have them available
intend for them to power only compatible accessories and don't actually include the
actual lighter (many even include an explicit message that states “this is not a ciga-
rette lighter”).
These 12 V receptacles will power the parts for this hack. You'll need three of them to
do it the way described here. You might be able to get away with using only two, but
you'd have to power your Raspberry Pi from a powered USB hub that also powers
devices connected to the same Raspberry Pi, and that isn't usually very reliable.
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